


and what else could I be? i'm all apologies

by SafelyCapricious



Series: ain't no grave can hold my body down [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Angst, Hugs, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26797615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: Arya doesn’t know why she’s scanning the trials so intently, day in and day out, until she realizes she’s looking for her sister.Her disowned sister. Who she shouldn’t care about anymore but…but she thinks she does. Even if it’s just to know what’s happened to her.But there’s no news. She knows she saw her fighting at Hogwarts — and it’s not exactly hard to know which side, her red hair is fairly distinctive.The possibility that Sansa got killed seems impossible.
Relationships: Ellaria Sand/Sansa Stark, Oberyn Martell/Ellaria Sand/Sansa Stark
Series: ain't no grave can hold my body down [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950148
Comments: 6
Kudos: 79





	and what else could I be? i'm all apologies

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from edited lyrics to Nirvana's All Apologies, to make it flow better as a fic title. I was listening to a Sinead O'Connor cover of it while posting this. 
> 
> Welcome to day three of Fictober! We are still alive! Prompt is "Cauldron" because of course it is. 
> 
> Casual reminder that JKR has decided to be an awful person and I do not support her at all, and I mostly see me playing in the sandbox she made as an intentional 'fuck you' to her. Trans lives matter. Death to the author. 
> 
> Also! I was going to say something else but I forgot. Whatever, have fun! Sorry for the angst. 
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Arya doesn’t know why she’s scanning the trials so intently, day in and day out, until she realizes she’s looking for her sister.

Her disowned sister. Who she shouldn’t care about anymore but…but she thinks she does. Even if it’s just to know what’s happened to her.

But there’s no news. She knows she saw her fighting at Hogwarts — and it’s not exactly hard to know which side, her red hair is fairly distinctive.

The possibility that Sansa got killed seems impossible.

But as the days stretch and there’s no news, she starts to wonder.

So she heads to Hogwarts — because surely they’ll have a list of the dead or —

The news that Sansa survived, that Sansa has retired to a cabin, that Sansa had been a _spy_ the whole time and —

Arya has never been good at thinking things through, and so as soon as she’s given the address she heads there. It’s not a place she knows — a little cottage out on the edge of an isolated magic community and — it looks like Sansa, somehow.

Devil’s ivy and ice roses climbing up the outside walls, but the garden is neat and orderly — and she recognizes a good number of common potion ingredients there.

The wards don’t stop her, and she doesn’t think to stop, until she’s pushed open the unlocked door and is staring at the straight back of her sister. Maybe she shouldn’t be sneaking up on her — she did just survive a war, they all did but.

But Sansa is just at her table stirring a potion and doesn’t bother to look up.

“Erm, hi,” Arya says, ignore the voice in her head that sounds like their mother, telling her she’s being rude.

Sansa raises a hand with a single finger up, as she continues to concentrate on the potion. That at least isn’t new.

Arya steps further into the house, because Sansa hasn’t stopped her yet, and rocks back and forth on her feet while she waits. She wouldn’t put it past her to take longer finishing up then necessary, but even Sansa can only delay so long before it would ruin a potion, and finally she’s carefully removing the glass rod she was using to stir and setting it off to the side.

“Lady Stark,” Sansa says, and turns towards her, clasping her hands together lightly in front of her stomach just like their mother used to.

Arya arches an eyebrow, and her gaze catches on a letter that’s on the side table addressed to Sansa. “You’re still going by Stone?” she asks, which definitely isn’t what she meant to say.

“I am,” Sansa confirms, voice cool and low, and it makes Arya want to scowl so she does.

“You’re a Stark — and — they told me, you know, that you were spying for us and weren’t on _his_ side, that you stepped between them and the death eaters during the battle and helped and, everything,” this still isn’t what she meant to say, but they’ve never been overly affectionate and she doesn’t know how to stop the words that are coming out of her mouth.

Sansa sighs and shifts slightly, which is the first emotion she’s showed and Arya still doesn’t know what it means. “I do try not to stereotype, but Gryffindors really are not very good at keeping secrets. I did ask them not to tell anyone.”

“But,” Arya objects, taking a step forward and not missing how smoothly Sansa takes a matching step back and shifts so the edge of the table is now between them, “we’re family, they can tell me these things.”

“It is very hard to reinstate someone who has been removed from the family tapestry, Lady Stark,” Sansa corrects, and takes another gliding step to the side that firmly puts the table between them.

Arya bites back the first five things she wants to say, and instead points out, voice as steady as she can make it. “You could’ve told us, you know, that you were doing that.”

“Oh?” Sansa asks, and there’s a tightness around her eyes now and like a strike of lightning Arya remembers, in the beginning, Sansa showing up at her door with her hair a mess and her makeup marred and she remembers telling her to go back to the snake pit and the friends she had made there and slamming the door in her face.

“You tried to tell me, didn’t you,” she can’t ask, she can’t handle the confirmations but she knows she’s right.

“I wouldn’t have been a very good spy if I went around telling people I was doing it,” Sansa rejoins, looking down at the table and starting to put away her ingredients carefully in jars.

“We should have known,” Arya says, because she doesn’t know how to apologize for not knowing — for not trusting — for turning her back on her sister because of who people told her she was associating with and for her Hogwarts house and —

And for blasting her name off the family tapestry.

Sansa doesn’t say anything, and turns away to tuck the jars into a cabinet that’s against the far wall.

Sansa continues to say nothing and Arya doesn’t know what she can do. And she still doesn’t know how to apologize or say what she’s feeling or —

Arya turns on her heel and rushes out the door because she doesn’t do well with inactivity and she needs to do something and this isn’t what she was expecting and — and she needs to tell the others. She needs to tell the others _now_.

Just before she apparates away she sees someone coming up the path and she thinks she recognizes them but then she’s gone.

***

“Who was that?” Ellaria asks as she breezes into the room, shutting the door behind her with her foot so she doesn’t have to put down the two bags she’s carrying. “They ran out of here like a bat out of hell.”

“Like a bat out of — That is _not_ a real saying, is it?” Sansa asks, her gaze turning away from the door, just in time to tilt her head and accept the kiss that Ellaria drops on her cheek.

Ellaria hums to herself as she unloads the bag, grinning when after a moment Sansa follows after, tidying as she goes. “It is.”

“But…I thought ‘Hell’ was that imaginary place bad people went? The religious one, yes? Why would a bat be there?” Sansa’s nose wrinkles in her confusion, and Ellaria cannot help but laugh at her ridiculous pureblooded lover.

This kiss lands on the other woman’s nose, and then when that prompts a pout, another kiss is places very lightly on said pout. “I…don’t actually know why a bat would be in hell,” Ellaria admits after a moment, reaching out to tuck some of Sansa’s hair behind her ear, “it’s just a saying.”

Sansa crosses her arms and frowns, “it’s nonsense, you made it up.”

Ellaria snorts and disengages to finish putting away her purchases. “I did not, but you’re avoiding telling me who was here, and why.”

“I am not,” she says, sullen — going so far as to cross her arms and Ellaria just arches an eyebrow at her.

Turning around and leaning against the side table Ellaria crosses her arms too, and waits her out. She knows Sansa well, and she would bottle all of her emotions up and refuse to ever speak of anything upsetting if she could. But it’s not good for her, and Ellaria won’t let her.

Eventually Sansa’s shoulders lose their rigidity and she lets out a slow breath, arms uncrossing and fingers tangling together. “It was Arya.”

Ellaria blinks and straightens — she was expecting something bad but not — not that. “Your…sister?” she asks, not because she thinks there would be any other Arya visiting, but because now she’s not sure how to continue this conversation or if she even should.

She hadn’t known Sansa when they’d been at Hogwarts, or she had, but not well. They’d been in Slytherin together, but she’d been a fifth year when Sansa had been a firstie, and far too busy preparing for her OWLS, and dealing with her new relationship with her sixth year beau to pay any attention to the newest pile of snakes.

Oberyn had known her back then, she knows, his ability to genuinely care about the younger years had been why he’d ended up as Head boy the following year. Not that he’d been close to Sansa then, but he’d known her and — and Ellaria was damned glad of it, since it was why he’d ended up being her handler when she offered to spy and without that she doubted they would have the other woman in their life. And they would be poorer for it.

Sansa hums in response, her arms starting to wrap around her waist and Ellaria cannot stand this, so she steps forward and gathers her lover against her instead.

“How can I help?” she asks, pressing Sansa’s head into her neck, despite the height difference that means Sansa has to slouch to do so, and then she starts to pet her, long strokes down her back and kisses to the side of her head.

Sansa lets herself be manhandled, which says quite a bit about her state, for all that there’s no shaking or sobbing — like Ellaria thinks there probably should be.

“Should I call Oberyn?” she asks, as Sansa stays slumped against her. That, at least, finally gets a reactions even if it’s just a shake of the head.

“She told me I was a Stark,” she says, soft enough that Ellaria isn’t entirely sure she heard her right, after another few long moments of silence.

Ellaria sucks in a sharp breath and tightens her grip on Sansa. She knows how that must have felt — she’s held Sansa the few times she did manage to cry about her estrangement from her family and that type of, probably well meaning but thoughtless cruelty makes her angry. “You’ll be a Martell by this time next week,” she points out.

The laugh sounds only a little forced, but Ellaria doesn’t try to stop Sansa from straightening from the embrace when she tries this time. There’s still tightness around her eyes that speak of pain, but the smirk curling her lips is genuine, at least. “You will be too.”

“I know,” she says, and smiles, and then, as the smirk softens on Sansa’s face, she cups her cheeks and pulls her down again for a kiss, sweet and simple and a reminder that she’s chosen her family, now, and they won’t be letting her go like her first had.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, Sansa is basically Snape here, fight me. Okay okay, don't fight me -- I think she 
> 
> A few things: Obviously from the summary you can see that Sakura dies in her universe before showing up here. 
> 
> She comes from a version of canon where things went worse then in canon, with them devolving into a whole 'Final War' that is...going poorly for anyone human. You may also notice that the universe now doesn't appear to be canon either, and you would be right. Sakura's under the impression that she might be back in time, but it's more like back in time in a totally different universe.  
> I remembered what I was going to say! I don't mean to imply that any of the Stark children handled this situation well, and there's a lot more to it than what made it into the fic. I have a stupid number of head canons for how short this is. In any case, I like to think that there is an actual full conversation that takes place later and they work through some of it. I love Arya & Sansa supporting each other, but this happened instead, I'm sorry. 
> 
> As always, available for chatting [on my writing tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/capriciouswrites).
> 
> Hope you enjoyed, please drop a comment and let me know your thoughts.


End file.
